


six to ten

by popsick



Category: Camp Camp (Web Series)
Genre: Other, i just really wanted to write about nikki, it's like a character study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-07
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2019-06-23 07:41:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15601557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/popsick/pseuds/popsick
Summary: nikki through the ages of six, eight, nine and ten.





	six to ten

Nikki is six.

 

Her mother and father are good at being parents. People tell them they look happy. People look at them and smile. Nikki is content with the life she has, though the only thing she wishes she has more of was nature. So, she tells her parents, “Mom, dad, I want to move.” And so, they do.

 

Their new home is miles away from the other homes. Green grasslands surround it, with horizons viewed over with toppling hills in the far-off distance. Nikki could see morning fog wet the leaves with dew every time she woke up. She loved how they drooped from their branches but then dried up by the time the sun shone down upon them.

 

Though in this home of theirs, she notices something different about her mother. Her mother is tired; her hands are sore and her eyes are empty. Nikki’s father is often gone, in and out of the house, but he never stays the night elsewhere.

 

The few visitors they have still smile and tell them they are such a wonderful family—but they never tell them they look happy, anymore.

 

Nikki wonders why.

 

Then she sees some weird-looking beetles climbing on large tree trunks and forgets to wonder any deeper.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nikki is eight.

 

It has been two years since they moved by the outskirts of town, where lakes never end their stream and trees never get cut down by big, giant, scary machines with long necks and a man controlling it with a stick inside.

 

Nikki has grown up; you’d figure she’d get tired of all the nature by that age, but she only grew to love it more. She never misses a day to breathe in the fresh air from out the window, or to stare at the ground in search for new earthworm friends, or to catch fireflies every night. But along with growing up also came a sense of alertness Nikki never knew she could have.

 

Nikki sees more things than she did and _understands_ them. One thing she sees often is her mother, whom stares into the laundry machine whenever she does laundry—and gets lost in the swirling of the clothes for a while. Nikki has to touch her mother’s shoulder to wake her from whatever she got stuck on.

 

The other is something she sees less of, these days. It was her father. Before, her father would bring home flowers to give to her mother after a ‘late night’ in the office (Nikki always wondered what that had meant). But not now. Not these days. Her father would spend weeks apart from them and come home without a word. Nikki had gotten used to the quietness between her parents; had even gotten _scared_ of it, at one point.

 

But Nikki knew they were still alright. Her mother still wakes up in the morning and cooks breakfast, and asks her about her day, and tells Nikki that her father will be home soon, even if she says it with a hollow look in her eyes.

 

Her father still kisses her goodnight sometimes, and by sometimes, she means a few times in a month, but Nikki tries not to count how many times it is anymore. She doesn’t like how she cried that one time, when it was August and the total for the entirety of the month was only three.

 

It seems Nikki tires hard _not_ to think about a lot of things these days.

 

 

 

 

Nikki is nine.

 

It has been a year after her father started disappearing for more than a few weeks. It had climbed up to a month, then one and a half months, and now, her father has been gone for three whole months.

 

Nikki remembers how this year started. Her mother had regained a bit of light in her eyes, just like how Nikki remembered it to be when they were still in the city. Nikki was happy about that—about her mother. Whenever Nikki told her mother how wonderful of a day it was, her mother would look up and respond with a smile and agree with her. Nikki never knew how much she’d missed that; it was like a breath of relief she’d been holding back ever since they got here.

 

But her mother also began to skip on a few things. They were small things, though. Like not cooking breakfast or forgetting to do the laundry, and forgetting the stove was on. Nikki was okay with this—Nikki thought her mother needed downtime, anyways.

 

But then there’d be these small instances, where Nikki would catch the small rambles in her mother’s room. Whispers, laughter, and weird voices Nikki couldn’t quite understand. It would always be at the middle of the night, and somehow, Nikki was convinced her mother could communicate with ghosts.

 

Nikki devised a plan to catch her mother in the act. To expose the ghost and save her mother from any further danger or brainwashing the ghost would do to her.

 

It was a success-bound plan.

 

She would wait ‘til the middle of the night, lying down on the bed an hour ahead so that when her mother would check on her, she’d look like she was already asleep.

 

And Nikki waited; it was a full-hour gap. Then it started.

 

The voices. The laughter. The whispers. Nikki knew she’d got them right under her trap.

 

Nikki grabs the kit she had ready underneath her bed. It was a flashlight, a blanket and a mask. She didn’t want the ghost to see her face or to look at her straight in the eyes—the movies say that’s how the ghosts _possess_ humans—so she settles for a mask with the smallest holes for the eyes to peer through.

 

Her vision was still quite blurred by the limited scope of the eye-holes, but it was enough for her to navigate from her room to her mother’s door.

 

She pressed her ear against the wood, and then she hears them louder than ever. It was the weird noises, that time. Like a whole mix of squirmy, breathy and scream-y noises. Nikki smiled to herself, having thought she was a door away from successfully scaring off a ghost and saving her mother all by herself.

 

With determination and sudden surge of strength, Nikki starts off with a loud laugh as she pushes the door wide open.

 

It was not a ghost.

 

“Ni-Nikki?!” Her mother screamed. It wasn’t the squirmy kind of scream. It was a scream with a face full of fear. Nikki had even saw disgust.

 

Nikki doesn’t know if she chose to forget it or if she really couldn’t remember. But there was a man, right behind her mother. His face was flushed red and he was stark naked. He looked like he was mad, embarrassed, and everything between that, but he hadn’t even stopped moving behind her mother.

 

His face was scary, and Nikki couldn’t understand, but at that moment, she just chose to cry, because her mother looked so much like she was in pain.

 

She didn’t know who the man was.

 

She didn’t know what they were doing.

 

But Nikki knew that it was only ever her father that had been that close to her mother.

 

That man

 

wasn’t

 

her father.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nikki is ten.

 

A month before summer, Nikki saw a pamphlet that had bolded letters printed on them. It read, ‘Adventure Camp! Giving Your Child the Adventures They’ll Remember for a Lifetime!’

 

She originally had no interest in it, really. She had already been quite close to nature, after all. She’d wanted to spend the whole summer catching bugs and butterflies and fireflies all by herself, since the traumatic experience she had at Flower Scouts proved that she wasn’t able to ‘get along’ with other girls her age.

 

Nikki remembers being stared at when she perched numerous, weird-looking, surely-endangered birds on her arm without so much as a twitch, and the usual trio of Sasha, Erin and Tabii screaming when Nikki wanted to introduce them to her lizard and earthworm friends.

 

She truly just wanted to get along with them, but nothing came alight for them to bond over. Nikki was dejected for the whole summer she spent there; not to mention, their Garden Mother was a weird woman that would be gone for half the day, and even when she’d be there, all she’d do is drink wine. Nikki couldn’t find it in herself to hate the Garden Mother though—she had reminded Nikki of her mom.

 

Nikki often thought and wondered about her mother. Nikki couldn’t read her like she did before. Her mother seemed more blurred and out of sorts than she’d been the last year. But Nikki knew there was something wrong. If Nikki looked back, it started on the day her father finally came back. Nikki felt a sense of relief when he did, as though he’d be able to fix everything right at that instant.

 

But he didn’t.

 

Nikki’s father hadn’t even bothered to look her in the eye when she ran from upstairs and grabbed onto his leg to greet him. The way that her father shook her off was slow and subtle; he had put his hand onto Nikki’s shoulder, and let Nikki feel the coldness of his palms—icy and indifferent—she let go of him on her own.

 

Her father marched into the kitchen where you’d always find Nikki’s mother, and there she was. They looked at each other for a few seconds. It was the same look both of them had started to give Nikki, sometimes.

 

Nikki stared at them, wondering how they can communicate without any words.

 

Nikki’s father held up a piece of paper and slid it across the table toward her mother, and her mother was ready with a pen in hand. She crouched over the table and wrote something down quickly wherever Nikki’s father would point on the piece of paper.

 

After their non-verbal communication ended, Nikki’s father left as abruptly as he’d arrived. The door closed behind her father’s back and in front of her mother’s face.

 

Nikki didn’t know a lot of the things that was going on, but she felt it in her chest. Something told her that they weren’t as wonderful of a family their visitors thought.

 

They weren’t as happy as Nikki had thought.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After that day, Nikki tells her mother she wants to go to the Adventure Camp.

 

Nikki doesn’t tell her the real reason why.

 

Nikki doesn’t tell her it’s because the silence between the two of them makes her cry at night.


End file.
